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My brother acquired an aging app (from an aging founder) built on Delphi used by many dozens (or low hundred) of the world’s leading shipping, energy and commod

My brother acquired an aging app (from an aging founder) built on Delphi used by many dozens (or low hundred) of the world’s leading shipping, energy and commodities companies, used as a standard to calculate “laytime” and “demurge” (myriad of fees associated when a ship docks into a port). It used to cost $5k for a perpetual license tied to usb based key that had to be plugged in to activate. If you wanted to use on two machines, you had to buy two licenses with two keys. Customers in the US and Europe hated the usb, especially during COVID. In random places of Africa, where they greatly valued the single perpetual license, it persists. From my perspective, I don’t see anything positive from being an installed application for this use case - he had to hop through so many security hoops that when he rolled out the web solution IT departments breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked him. Over a period of about 2 years he converted almost everyone to saas and 4x’d the annual revenue. That also generated enough fcf to hire more developers to ship more features. Saas is generally the way to go. Installed apps are common in financial services and industrial applications. I can think of a bunch of other niche examples but I personally would never pursue this model. We put bugs into production from time to time and it is nice to be able to instantly roll out updates.

charliebwrites 2y ago
How did he price out the SaaS model vs the USB perpetual license?
- lefstathiou 2y ago
  Same price, only difference is you pay it annually instead of perpetually. I think it’s like 10-15k per license per year.
adriand 2y ago
> used as a standard to calculate “laytime” and “demurge” (myriad of fees associated when a ship docks into a port). Nitpick: I think you mean “demurrage”: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demurrage.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demurrage.asp
zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
He inherited a existing customer base in a niche field. That's not exactly easy to replicate from scratch.
jakeydus 2y ago
Very demurge, very mindful
fullstackchris 2y ago
Nitpick here: both models are still SaaS, the only difference is the first way was deployed via (desktop?) app and the second via web. But indeed, web is typically the most flexible option unless you are leveraging something on the OS that would otherwise be cumbersom or impossible via web (not often the case)
- sirjaz 2y ago
  Unfortunately, a vast majority of WebApps are hot garbage and even the good ones can never be as functional or as performative as a native app. We have such powerful machines, but we relegate them to such a horrible method of using them.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    WebApps (even though I hate most of them) absolutely can be as fast as native apps. E.g.: Linear, Slack. But it requires very careful engineering.
    - neverartful 2y ago
      In my experience they are not nearly as fast.
  - 6510 2y ago
    Very few components are needed to make a bare bones web browser that is more of a vm. It would need one or more advantages over normal www browsers. Applications could be memory, and computationally heavy, it could store its data locally with some guarantees, it could run conventional web application on very crappy hardware. A new platform also offers countless opportunities to do new things or do things differently. That list is endless.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  How is the first one SaaS? It's a perpetual (seemingly one time) license they said.
sirjaz 2y ago
[flagged]
ensemblehq 2y ago
That's an awesome story. How did your brother find the opportunity to acquire the aging app?
- lefstathiou 2y ago
  My brother was a consultant and is an extraordinary networker (and salesman) in the shipping space. He knew of this tool, was looking for a challenge, cultivated a relationship with the owner and then made an offer.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Thanks for stating this. Some customers (who are often the vocal minority) don't like SaaS likely due to subscription fatigue but most don't realize the amount of manpower it requires to continuously update software that will atrophy without them, not to mention adding more features. The business reality is often not understood by the users and that's why every company is moving towards SaaS, it allows the company developing the product to continue to stay in business rather than providing a product then shuttering because it couldn't sell enough. The former is simply more sustainable than the other, much as some (like the vocal minority) might disagree with this fact. --- That being said, there are many who sell one-time licenses, especially in the indie hacker space on Twitter, such as NomadList and BoltAI. Their model works because they make enough money from their products to retire on, as solo devs, and their products aren't necessarily ones that require constant updates (well, maybe BoltAI as new AI advances come out all the time that need to be implemented, such as RAG, parsing PDFs, storing "memories" like OpenAI, etc, but most advances come through new models, which is just an API call away).
- massysett 2y ago
  Some users do not want updates. I understand that updating software takes manpower. Same for running servers for sync or online information or similar. But I might rather pay once for something that works on my machine as it is now. I need no servers or sync. If I need an upgrade later, I’ll buy it. I do buy some software as a service but for other software if there’s a subscription I just don’t buy.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Depends on the size of the company. Perhaps you're simply not the target customer for that company, you self-select out of their customer pipeline which makes it easier for them to handle costs, as it is more expensive to maintain separate SaaS and one-time versions (essentially on-premise, which is often much more expensive and for enterprises who can afford them due to said hassle). However, some solo devs and smaller companies do exist that make only one-time purchase products, because they don't have much overhead.
  - 2y ago
Waterluvian 2y ago
Really shows you just how valuable the application sandbox that is a web browser can be to many.
cyberneticcook 2y ago
If I may ask where did he buy the app from? Some online marketplace ? I’d love to browse these kind of deals.
- lefstathiou 2y ago
  Sorry for the late reply: he’s been in the maratime industry his whole career. Met the founder years ago, stay in touched, then made the ask.

charliebwrites 2y ago

How did he price out the SaaS model vs the USB perpetual license?

lefstathiou 2y ago
Same price, only difference is you pay it annually instead of perpetually. I think it’s like 10-15k per license per year.

adriand 2y ago

> used as a standard to calculate “laytime” and “demurge” (myriad of fees associated when a ship docks into a port). Nitpick: I think you mean “demurrage”: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demurrage.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demurrage.asp

zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago

He inherited a existing customer base in a niche field. That's not exactly easy to replicate from scratch.

jakeydus 2y ago

Very demurge, very mindful

fullstackchris 2y ago

Nitpick here: both models are still SaaS, the only difference is the first way was deployed via (desktop?) app and the second via web. But indeed, web is typically the most flexible option unless you are leveraging something on the OS that would otherwise be cumbersom or impossible via web (not often the case)

sirjaz 2y ago
Unfortunately, a vast majority of WebApps are hot garbage and even the good ones can never be as functional or as performative as a native app. We have such powerful machines, but we relegate them to such a horrible method of using them.
- cyberax 2y ago
  WebApps (even though I hate most of them) absolutely can be as fast as native apps. E.g.: Linear, Slack. But it requires very careful engineering.
  - neverartful 2y ago
    In my experience they are not nearly as fast.
- 6510 2y ago
  Very few components are needed to make a bare bones web browser that is more of a vm. It would need one or more advantages over normal www browsers. Applications could be memory, and computationally heavy, it could store its data locally with some guarantees, it could run conventional web application on very crappy hardware. A new platform also offers countless opportunities to do new things or do things differently. That list is endless.
satvikpendem 2y ago
How is the first one SaaS? It's a perpetual (seemingly one time) license they said.

sirjaz 2y ago

[flagged]

ensemblehq 2y ago

That's an awesome story. How did your brother find the opportunity to acquire the aging app?

lefstathiou 2y ago
My brother was a consultant and is an extraordinary networker (and salesman) in the shipping space. He knew of this tool, was looking for a challenge, cultivated a relationship with the owner and then made an offer.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Thanks for stating this. Some customers (who are often the vocal minority) don't like SaaS likely due to subscription fatigue but most don't realize the amount of manpower it requires to continuously update software that will atrophy without them, not to mention adding more features. The business reality is often not understood by the users and that's why every company is moving towards SaaS, it allows the company developing the product to continue to stay in business rather than providing a product then shuttering because it couldn't sell enough. The former is simply more sustainable than the other, much as some (like the vocal minority) might disagree with this fact. --- That being said, there are many who sell one-time licenses, especially in the indie hacker space on Twitter, such as NomadList and BoltAI. Their model works because they make enough money from their products to retire on, as solo devs, and their products aren't necessarily ones that require constant updates (well, maybe BoltAI as new AI advances come out all the time that need to be implemented, such as RAG, parsing PDFs, storing "memories" like OpenAI, etc, but most advances come through new models, which is just an API call away).

massysett 2y ago
Some users do not want updates. I understand that updating software takes manpower. Same for running servers for sync or online information or similar. But I might rather pay once for something that works on my machine as it is now. I need no servers or sync. If I need an upgrade later, I’ll buy it. I do buy some software as a service but for other software if there’s a subscription I just don’t buy.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Depends on the size of the company. Perhaps you're simply not the target customer for that company, you self-select out of their customer pipeline which makes it easier for them to handle costs, as it is more expensive to maintain separate SaaS and one-time versions (essentially on-premise, which is often much more expensive and for enterprises who can afford them due to said hassle). However, some solo devs and smaller companies do exist that make only one-time purchase products, because they don't have much overhead.
- 2y ago

Waterluvian 2y ago

Really shows you just how valuable the application sandbox that is a web browser can be to many.

cyberneticcook 2y ago

If I may ask where did he buy the app from? Some online marketplace ? I’d love to browse these kind of deals.

lefstathiou 2y ago
Sorry for the late reply: he’s been in the maratime industry his whole career. Met the founder years ago, stay in touched, then made the ask.